Neighbors say Osprey landing anything but 'precautionary' the plane narrowly missed the tree line in their backyard was smoking on the way down. It brushed the top of the trees, the belly of it did. You could see pinecones falling 1st Lt. Kristin Dalton said the smoke was the result of “fluid leaking onto hot parts of the aircraft similar to if you spilt oil on a hot lawn mower. But she added that “just because the aircraft was smoking and there was a fluid leaking does not mean that (the pilots) lost control of the aircraft in any way....

In two months we Americans will go to the polls once again to decide who the president will be for the next four years. We will not be allowed to vote on those who wield the true power in this country. On November 6th we will not vote for the chairman of ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase or Citibank or the Premier of China. That day will come, but not this year. Now, I know there are a goodly number of you out there who believe there's not a snowball's chance in Kenya that Barack Obama will not be re-elected to...

First it was the media, now it is the artists. Censorship in the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring - Tunisia - is back. The government has already been accused of clamping down on reporters. And now, two Tunisian artists have been charged. Their crime: creating sculptures that the authorities say are harmful to public order and good morals. Nadia Jelassi's work is of a veiled woman surrounded by rocks and suggests she is being stoned, while Mohamed Ben Slama's work is of a child with ants streaming from a schoolbag that spelt out "God". Meanwhile in Egypt, two journalists...

BIRMINGHAM—A federal grand jury today indicted a Huntsville man for fraud and unauthorized wearing of U.S. military uniforms and medals, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Robert E. Haley, III announced. The FBI and U.S. Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigated the case. An indictment filed in U.S. District Court charges Chris Graham with: one count of fraud in relation to (possessing) identification documents, two counts of wearing of the U.S. "Army Combat Uniform" (without authorization). eight counts of unauthorized wearing of U.S. military badges, decorations, or medals (on combat uniform?). 15 years in prison...

"Christie did spearhead legislation that increased pension contributions by public employees, tweaked benefits and halted cost of living increases," but did little or nothing to stop the costly practice of 'double-dipping.. which allows well-connected officials to 'retire,' start collecting a pension and then return to work for the state, often the next day or week." The most prominent of the double-dippers exposed recently just happens to be Christie's deputy chief of staff, Louis Goetting, "who gets $228,860 a year - $140,000 in salary, plus $88,860 as a state retiree." New Jersey Watchdog found at least 60 double-dippers in New Jersey...

Defense Department's top attorney , "all remedies legally available" against the publication of No Easy Day, (of the) firsthand account of the mission (which culminated in the demise of 0 bin Laden). "You are in material breach and violation of the nondisclosure agreements you signed," wrote Pentagon general counsel Jeh Charles Johnson. The letter; threats of a criminal prosecution seizure of as well as go after publisher Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group. In a written response, "Mr. Owen sought legal advice about his responsibilities before agreeing to publish his book and scrupulously reviewed the work to ensure that it...

On 6 November 1860, the six-year-old Republican Party elected its first president. During the tense crisis months that followedâ€ˆÂ–â€ˆthe Â“secession winterÂ” of 1860Â–61â€ˆÂ–â€ˆpractically all observers believed that Lincoln and the Republicans would begin attacking slavery as soon as they took power. Democrats in the North blamed the Republican Party for the entire sectional crisis. They accused Republicans of plotting to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against direct federal attacks on slavery. Republicans would instead allegedly try to squeeze slavery to death indirectly, by abolishing it in the territories and in Washington DC, suppressing it in the high seas, and refusing federal...

I’ve covered national political party conventions since 1980. I know how amped-up the rhetoric can get on both sides. But I have never heard so much fear of an incumbent as I’ve witnessed during this week’s Republican National Convention. “Every election we hear that this is the most important election in our lifetime,” Sharon Day, who co-chairs the Republican National Committee, told delegates last night. “This election is more than that. It is the most important election in our nation’s lifetime.” She compared GOP activists to the United States’ Founding Fathers: “What they started, what they believed in, we must...

After weeks of op-ed pieces against our President, I’d like to offer a dissenting viewpoint. I like and respect and consider Jack Bennett a friend, but disagree with him politically. I have no doubt that it will set off a series of tyrannical rants from the right, and that’s okay. I’m a liberal Christian, sixty-two year old female, Democrat and retired educator (in order of importance to me). For as long as I can remember my litmus test for those I vote for is based on a quote from the late Vice President Hubert Humphrey: “The moral test of government...

NEWBURY PARK — Complaints poured in Monday about a 10-foot-high wooden structure and neon sign in a quiet Newbury Park neighborhood that says “Romney’s Racist Heart Dotcom. Save the GOP.” “It’s obnoxious. It’s an eyesore here. I wish it was gone,” said one neighbor. Steven Showers, 59, built the display after doing research into Mormonism after it became apparent that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would get the Republican nomination for president, according to the Ventura County Star. “I love it. It’s the way I designed it,” Showers said.

Over at the Plum Line, they’re saying that Romney is channeling Lee Atwater. Lee Atwater is one of the nasty playground bullies who adhered to the Republican party like a piece of used toilet paper, lowering its reputation and making way for ethically-challenged, “anything goes” politicians the Republican party now has in the House and on its campaign trails. When Atwater died, he left behind Rove and other dodgy characters like Dick Armey to carry on the right’s effort to fracture and pillage America. Their kind of narrow self-interest has been emblematic of Republican politics for thirty years now. Racism?...

TAMPA, FL - While the mainstream media hasn't really been reporting that much on activities of either the Occupy Tampa group or the anarchists that are expected to show up, the Occupy Tampa folks have got their LiveStream up and going. (There have been a few reports from big media like Newsday and the NY Daily News. ) If weather gets out of hand, the Occupy Tampa website is asking for help with shelter.They also have a plea out for attorneys to help them. They wrote: "Recently we’ve dealt with an increasing amount of police harassment. On the night of...

"We've averaged $1.5 trillion a year in federal deficit spending since OBAMA! was elected. That's about 41 cents out of every dollar the government spends. These new debts will total more than $6 trillion by the end of OBAMA!'s first term. It's hard for most people to understand what this means because the numbers are so big, they simply don't compute. Think about it this way... That $6 trillion OBAMA! has borrowed is not only more money than any other president has ever borrowed before... But it's more money than every president has borrowed combined. When OBAMA! took office in...

Mitt Romney -- maybe he wasn't happy with the hatchet job by Trump and Sununu? By playing the racist "birther" card, America's first serious Mormon Presidential candidate has concluded that his best chance of winning the White House is to rally his Republican base including the Tea Party and hope for a few bad things to also happen. Speaking at a campaign rally in Michigan today before a crowd of a few thousand, the desperate Republican candidate said: “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where both of us were born...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney cracked a birther joke on Friday, underlining just how much his campaign is banking on the vote of white people. Speaking in his native state of Michigan, Romney said, “I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised. Where both of us were born.” He then added, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.” The Obama campaign fired back. In a statement, the campaign said, “Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices...

Leonardo da Vinci’s arguably most famous drawing is called the Vitruvian Man. You’ve seen it; it’s the one where a buff man is stretching out in two positions inside a circle. Also called The Proportions of Man, it got us thinking about what a Vitruvian Republican might look like. What are his “proportions?” The Republican Party’s latest draft platform was completed this week, just in time for next week’s Tampa convention. It gives us a pretty good idea of what Republican Man looks like. According to the platform, who is a Republican voter voting to elect? 1. A manly man...

Last month, the Russia Navy announced it was assembling a task force in the Mediterranean: a frigate, two corvettes, five landing craft (with, 3 reinforced Marines companys ) and a tanker. “to defend Russian shipping in the event of a naval blockade" of Syria by NATO naval forces. By the end of July, the two landing ships from the Black Sea fleet returned to Sevastopol. This month, the three landing craft from the North Fleet remaining “are planned to dock in Tartus” – the Russian naval base in Syria. After docking in Tartus, the Russian military command planned to send...

THE VIEW FROM WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee announced that he has selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his vice presidential running mate. Conservatives are hoping against hope that this selection will relaunch Romney’s campaign by providing the necessary policy focus that has been lacking up to this point. Conservative columnist Paul Gigot recently wrote, “The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election…Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda…” Gigot calls Ryan “a man of...

Soviet citizens had to be Kremlinologists, studying subtle linguistic and tonal shifts in state propaganda, noting the seating order of party leaders at official functions, in order to predict the future direction of their lives. So too are we Americans, for without any way to really get to know our politicians—their press conferences and interviews are too infrequent and carefully stagemanaged, unchallenged by compliant journalistic toadies — we are reduced to reading signals. Even to an alienated electorate, the tealeaves are easy to read on the Republican side. Between Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, his team...

Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate Roseanne Barr compared America to pre-war Berlin and agreed that poor Republicans are like the Jewish police, the pro-Nazi units who "collected people for forced labor, guarded the ghetto fences and gates and eventually seized people for deportations," Twitchy reported Tuesday. "[A]merica is currently just like pre war berlin & EVERYONE is a Jew now, (sic)" she tweeted Tuesday. "And poor republicans are the Jewish police," one person responded. "[Y]es," Barr replied. "If you are a low-income Republican, Roseanne Barr considers you the moral equivalent of a Jew who oversaw the deportation of other...